ᴡʜᴀᴛ ᴡɪʟʟ ɪᴛ ᴛᴀᴋᴇ?

𝑅𝓊𝓃, 𝓇𝒶𝒷𝒷𝒾𝓉!

Nowhere is safe, but anywhere is better than here. Where the monsters lurk, you pray you can keep running before they get to you. Here, they are supreme, and you? You are their prey.

They find you in the day, in the night, in the dusk, in the dawn. It's no use hiding here. Just run. Run as fast as you can. Run little rabbit, run.

Run, rabbit, run!

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The walls cracked with groans of protest as the battle above persisted. You didn't have time to think about who or what was above you, all you were worried about was making it out without any broken bones. Injuries like that mean near certain death; staying in here is sealing the deal. You don't like admitting it, but you've gotten used to crawling through holes and letting yourself become numb to the roughness of debris. Nothing really hurts that much anymore. You didn't have time to feel hurt, only to improve your speed, stamina, and preferably agility. No, it's no good thinking about what you're crawling over. If it's rocks or bones, tiles or steel, broken bottles or shards of concrete, sludge or corpses, it doesn't matter. None of it matters. The only thing that matters is surviving.

The first rule of surviving is to never look back. To survive you must be heartless, unfeeling. Others will only drag you down. So you have to continue on your own. You just need to keep running.

Run, run, run!

"Mom?"

A strained voice of a young boy filled your ears, and you stopped. You turn around, and see a boy who couldn't be older than six. Messy black hair with eyes to match, light skinned, and an utterly terrified expression. He scrambled further away from you, clutching a rock.

"You're-you're- you're not my mom!" He stutters, clenching the rock like his life depends on it.

He's trembling like mad, covered in dirt and mud, obviously doing his best to survive. Just like you.

Looking closer, you clearly see tears start to fall down his cheeks, yet he still holds the rock high in the air, waiting to throw it.

There's three choices you could make. One is to leave him for the monsters and continue running. The second is to kill him yourself, as the likelihood is that if he's alone his mother is dead. Or three, pick him up and run the hell out of here.

The most practical responses are one and two, but your conscious couldn't handle the guilt. Handle the guilt of causing a child's death one way or another. Knowing that if his mother was somehow alive, even if she'd never know, you would've taken away the most special person in her life. No. No- you can't do it. Even if it was the most practical way to survive, you didn't know if you could really gamble losing your humanity as well in this godforsaken apocalypse- you weren't sure there would be a point to continue living.

"Hey, don't cry," you comfort quietly, taking careful steps towards him. "I'll help you find your mum, but first, you have to let me carry you, okay? Before the big bad monsters get you."

Seeing you unarmed, he slowly nods. He puts down the rock, and begins to crawl to you, before sobbing violently as he's pulled away from you. His knees scrape the ground and he's bleeding and oh god he turned around and the monster's so big and he's going to die he's going to die he's going to die he'sgoingtodiehe'sgoingtodiehe's-

The sound of shattered glass rings in his ears, before feeling his body be released.

Shaking, he turns around and see's the end of a broken whiskey bottle in your hands. A scowl is on your face, and in the midst of his fear he noticed your feet slowly back away.